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South Alyeska
http://download.sovmusic.ru/m/slavank2.mp3 |image_map = |thumb| |formationdate = 07/31/2009 |alliance = Siberian Tiger Alliance |allianceflag = Flag of the Siberian Tiger Alliance.svg |team = White |languages = Russian |demonym = South Alyeskan |government = Monarchy |ruler = Tsar Jacob Reiffenstein |image_ruler = russian-general.jpg |religion = Christianity |currency = Rouble |statisticsdate = May 9, 2010 |rank = 7,791 |infra = 4,999.99 |tech = 78.04 |litrate = 97.05 |landarea = 1,453.849 |nationstrength = 17,018.175 |totalpop = 55,014 |civilians = 44,982 |soldiers = 10,032 |nativeresources = |connectedresources = |bonusresources = , }} In the alternate Cybernations universe, South Alyeska is a medium sized, mostly developed, and old nation at 187 days old with citizens primarily of Russian ethnicity whose religion is Chistianity. Its technology is first rate and its citizens marvel at the astonishing advancements within their nation. Its citizens pay extremely high taxes and many despise their government as a result. The citizens of South Alyeska work diligently to produce Rubber and Lumber as tradable resources for their nation. It is an aggressive country that some say has an itch for war. South Alyeska is currently researching nuclear technology for the use of nuclear power plants but believes nuclear weapons should be banned. The military of South Alyeska has been positioned at all border crossings and is arresting all drug traffickers. South Alyeska does not allow any form of government protests. Its armed police forces work quickly at "dissolving" any and all government protests. Its borders are closed to all forms of immigration. Free speech is considered taboo in South Alyeska. The government of South Alyeska has no compassion for other people of the world and does not contribute to foreign aid. The government of South Alyeska will trade with any other country regardless of ethical consequences. History South Alyeska's history dates back to the end of the Upper Paleolithic Period, when Asiatic groups first crossed the Bering Land Bridge sometime between 16,000 and 10,000 BC into what is now western Alyeska. At the time of European contact by Russian explorers, the area was populated by a number of Native Amerindian groups, which have largely been assimilated into modern South Alyeskan society and culture. Indeed, the name "Alyeska" derives from the Amerindian word alaxsxaq, meaning "mainland" (literally, "the object toward which the action of the sea is directed"). The Russians were the first Europeans to reach Alyeska, arriving in 1648. Over the next two hundred years, Russian entrepreneurs and adventurers, backed by the Tsarist government, established trade routes and settlements in Alyeska. But these proved to be unprofitable, and in 1867, Tsar Alexander II offered to sell Alyeska to the U.S. for $7,200,000. U.S. Secretary of State William H. Seward reacted favorably and entered negotiations with the Imperial Government to make the deal. The treaty of sale was signed in April 1867 but the U.S. Senate refused to ratify it, leaving Alyeska under Russian rule for the next fifty-three years. On October 24, 1922, at the end of the Russian Civil War, the shattered remnants of the anti-Bolshevik White Army fled Vladivostok in a rag-tag fleet of some thirty decrepit warships of the Siberian Squadron, led by elderly Vice Admiral Oskar Victorovich Stark. With British naval assistance, the refugee convoy made the dangerous northern Pacific passage to South Alyeska, landing at the old trading post of Anchorage. The Soviet Red Army, exhausted and lacking the naval capacity for pursuit, halted at Vladivostok to focus on consolidating Bolshevik rule in Siberia and Russia. At Anchorage, General Timofei Fyodoryevich Reiffenstein, a White officer of Finnish-German heritage and associate of Admiral Aleksandr V. Kolchak, declared himself as Kolchak's successor and adopted the title "Supreme Ruler" (Verkhovnyi Pravitel) of Russia and South Alyeska. With British assistance from Canada, he re-organized and re-armed his Siberian survivors to repel possible future Red Army attacks. Then following Kolchak's model, he began building a new government, based on old Tsarist law, to oversee the settlement and integration of his refugees into the existing Alyeskan settlements. He chose Anchorage as the new capital city because of its strategic location and harbor. Reiffenstein soon realized two things: 1) the Bolshevik government of Vladimir I. Lenin had become too strong to overthrow and that his people could never return to Russia, and 2) that his military dictatorship could not sustain itself permanently, and that his people needed a more stable and legitimate government, based on centuries of tradition with which they were comfortable. In short, they required a strong Tsar. So, in December 1924, Reiffenstein announced South Alyeska's formal succession from Bolshevik Russia and proclaimed himself as its first Tsar. He based his tenuous claim on distant, unverifiable kinship to Tsarina Catherine the Great, herself a German by birth. With virtually no opposition, even from second and third generation Russian settlers, South Alyeskans overwhelmingly accepted Reiffenstein's claim. The United States, the Dominion of Canada, and the United Kingdom of Great Britain, desperately wanting to keep the Bolsheviks out of North America, also agreed to recognize Reiffenstein's government and to support South Alyeska with military and economic aid. With the backing of his people and western allies secure, Reiffenstein was coronated on the old Russian Christmas Day of January 7, 1925 at St. Nicholas Russian Orthodox Church at Eklutna outside Anchorage. Thus began the Reiffenstein dynasty. Following Tsar Timofei Reiffenstein's coronation, the Bolshevik government of the new Union of Soviet Socialist Republics (USSR) remained hostile to the new "White" nation of South Alyeska, viewing it as a clear threat as a potential government-in-waiting. However, Reiffenstein had no intention of ever returning to Russia and challenging the Soviet regime. Instead, he focused on building his new nation's infrastructure and military forces to defend South Alyeska against a Soviet invasion and attacks from other potential enemies. Over the next fifteen years, South Alyeska established itself within the family of nations, fending off occasional Soviet scouting incursions and espionage operations. But due to its remoteness and harsh climate, the nation remained largely out of reach of Soviet military forces, which were incapable of organizing and launching the large-scale combined arms invasion across the Northern Pacific that would be necessary to crush South Alyeska. Conversely, South Alyeska fostered excellent diplomatic and economic relationships with its new neighbors, the Dominion of Canada and the United States of America. Great Britain, which had done much to assist the White Army survivors during and after their escape from Vladivostok, likewise became a close ally and trading partner. During World War II, South Alyeska remained mostly neutral, with the USSR fighting for its life against Nazi Germany in Europe. But the nation did assist the U.S. in defeating the Japanese invasion of the distant Aleutian Islands of Attu and Kiska in 1942 and 1943. After the war, the USSR was preoccupied with reconstruction and extending its influence over Eastern Europe and the Balkans, but South Alyeska remained wary and maintained close ties with Canada and the US for its own protection. Later during the Cold War, the Soviet Union turned its attention back to South Alyeska, launching small unit raids across the Bering Strait, conducting submarine patrols off the coast, and sending strategic bombers to overfly Alyeskan territory. In the face of these overt provocations, South Alyeska drastically expanded its armed forces in the 1960s, creating the South Alyeskan Strike Fleet and Royal Air Force, and the reborn "White Army." After some violent encounters with losses on both sides, the Soviets backed-off, fearing an escalation with South Alyeska's U.S.-led allies. After the fall of the Soviet Union in 1991, relations between the Russian Federation and South Alyeska dramatically improved, with new diplomatic initiatives, trade deals, and cultural exchanges benefiting both nations. To both recognize and honor their common military and cultural heritage, South Alyeska took the opportunity in the late 1990s to completely reequip and retrain its armed forces with top-of-the-line Russian hardware. Currently, South Alyeska is a thriving nation which is quickly growing into a regional superpower in the north. Its current Tsar is Timofei's great-grandson, Yacov (Jaska or Jacob) Rostislavyevich Reiffenstein, who ascended to the throne of South Alyeska on July 31, 2009. Language and Culture South Alyeskans speak a dialect of the Russian language which is flavored by the Native Amerindian languages with many Native words and sounds incorporated into the vocabulary. The dialect has also been influenced with Canadian English due to the proximity and the close trade relationship between the two nations. South Alyeskans still use the Cyrillic alphabet in their writing and correspondence out of tradition rather than adopting the more widespread Latin/English system of alphabet. South Aleyskan culture is traditionally Russian, but as with the language, Native Amerindian culture has made an obvious impact in everything from art and architecture, to song and dance, to religion. By virtue of South Alyeska's geographic location between the Pacific and Arctic Oceans, its culture, particularly in the coastal communities, also exhibits a strong maritime influence based upon the nation's reliance on seaborne commerce to move its vast natural resources from the interior to global markets. Religion At Three Saints Bay, Grigory Shelikov built a school to teach the natives to read and write Russian, and introduced the first resident missionaries and clergymen who spread the Russian Orthodox faith. This faith (with its liturgies and texts, translated into Aleut at a very early stage) had been informally introduced, in the 1740s-1780s, by the fur traders who founded local families or symbolically adopted Aleut trade partners as godchildren to gain their loyalty through this special personal bond. The missionaries soon opposed the exploitation of the indigenous populations and their reports remain one of our main sources on the violence exercised to establish colonial rule in this period. Inspired by the same pastoral theology as Bartolomé de las Casas or St. Francis Xavier, the origins of which come from early Christianity's need to adapt to the cultures of Antiquity, missionaries in Russian America applied a strategy that placed value on local cultures and encouraged indigenous leadership in parish life and missionary activity. This cultural policy was originally intended to gain the loyalty of the indigenous populations by establishing the authority of Church and State as protectors of over 10,000 inhabitants of Russian America (where the number of ethnic Russian settlers had always been less than the record 812, almost all concentrated in Sitka and Kodiak). A side effect of the missionary strategy was to generate a new and autonomous form of indigenous identity, allowing many native traditions to survive in local "Russian" Orthodox tradition and in the religious life of the villages. Part of this modern indigenous identity is an alphabet and the basis for a written literature in almost each of the ethnic-linguistic groups in the Southern half of Alaska. Father Ivan Veniaminov (later St. Innocent of Alyeska), famous throughout Russian America, also developed an Aleut dictionary for hundreds of languages and dialects based on the Russian alphabet. Today, Orthodox Russian Christianity is the official state religion of South Alyeska, with over ninety parishes and a membership of over 50,000 men, women, and children, including several Athabascan groups of the interior, very large Yup'ik communities, and nearly all of the Aleut and Koniag populations. Among the few predominantly Tlingit Orthodox parishes, the large group in Juneau adopted Orthodox Christianity only after the Russian colonial period, in an area where there had been no Russian settlers nor missionaries. What probably explains such an extent of a local Russian Orthodox tradition and its persistence is the merger of local cultures and Christian beliefs and rituals. It is a situation comparable in many aspects to the history of Latin American Catholicism.